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Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon on Sunday ridiculed America and other Western powers for continuing to cling to the myth that Western-style democracy will ever truly take hold in the Islamic Middle East.

Speaking at the annual security conference at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Ya'alon explained that in a region where far too many value death over life, the moral base upon which Western democracy must be built is lacking.

Western, and in particular American, policy in this regard reeks of "ignorance, naivete, wishful thinking, and, no less important, patronization," added the defense minister.

But from the Spanish conquistadors to the British Empire to global American economic influence, Western powers have long sought to impose their way of governance on regions where it doesn't necessarily fit. This is nothing new.

What is astonishing, in Ya'alon's assessment, is that today's Western leaders can look at the turmoil that has come in the wake of the supposedly pro-democracy "Arab Spring" and still pretend that birthing a Palestinian state will result in a stable, free and genuinely democratic entity.

Ya'alon stated:

"One of the most incredible things in a period when the notion of the nation state is collapsing before our eyes is that there are those who are trying to advance, in one way or another, the founding of yet another nation-state — even as it remains unclear how the people of Jenin are connected to the people of Hebron, and uncertain that there is a common denominator between those in Judea and Samaria and those in Gaza."

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